Utilization of Prophylactic Antibiotics for Cardiac Patients Undergoing Dental Procedures in Saudi Arabia: A Retrospective Study

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to determine the characteristics of antibiotic prophylaxis (AP) utilization and the level of adherence of King Saud University Medical City (KSUMC) staff to the latest American Heart Association (AHA) guidelines for AP for infective endocarditis (IE) in cardiac patients undergoing dental procedures. METHODS: The study was conducted as a retrospective cohort study to investigate the relationship between AP in dental procedures and cardiac patients admitted in the surgical wards of KSUMC between 2015 and 2021. All cardiac patients who underwent dental procedures were included in the study. We excluded patients with long-term or concurrent antibiotic use for other indications. RESULTS: Overall, 170 (69.4%) cardiac patients received AP before undergoing a dental procedure. The most common comorbidities were hypertension (39.1%) and diabetes (34.2%). Most of the low-risk (69.4%) and moderate-risk (70.5%) patients received AP, despite the guideline’s recommendation to limit AP to high-risk patients only. Moreover, only 53.8% of high-risk patients were prescribed AP. In total, 95.9% of the 170 patients who received AP did so without following the recommendations. Only one patient developed IE during the 1-year follow-up. Tooth extraction was the only significant predictor of AP prescription in our study (P = 0.001; OR: 3.73; 95% CI; 1.678–8.298). CONCLUSION: There was an exceeding level of inconsistency (95.9%) in AP utilization by cardiac patients in our sample compared with the recommendations of the latest AHA guidelines.